Yesterday was the funeral for my pastor friend who received his final promotion on Friday. There was beautiful songs sung and some personal stories shared by friends and family. Both of the preachers who spoke did a wonderful job of delivering the eulogies. One dear lady got up and read a sentence out of a book.
When going through her granddad’s study there at the church she had found a book she had given him some time before. She told us he wasn’t much into books other than the Bible but he had at least read some of this book. For inside she had found a book mark and a single sentence was underlined, the only mark he had made in the entire book. It said, “His life was not cut short, it was completed.”
The same holds true for Pastor Bill. Not because he was eighty some years old, but because his service for Jesus was now complete. His time to receive his reward had arrived. No longer does he feel pain nor bear with the fragility of this life. Those left behind sorrow at their lose but rest comfortably in the knowledge that because they are saved by the shed blood of Jesus Christ they will be reunited with him again some day.
Now God does not take this matter of death lightly. Death was not part of His original design. Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”. That is why Jesus had to come and die so that we could escape the eternal death awaiting everyone once they leave this world and go to Heaven instead. Also God doesn’t just sweep us away like yesterdays garbage when we die, Psalms 116:15 “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” We mean a great deal to God, so that even He is touched by the passing from this life of those He calls His own. And when we pass it is because our life is complete, no matter at what age.